O. Winston Link: Life Along the Line: A Photographic Portrait of America's Last Great Steam Railroad

O. Winston Link photographed the Norfolk and Western, the last major steam railroad in the United States, when it was converting its operations from steam to diesel in the 1950s. Link’s N&W project captured the industry at a moment of transition, before the triumph of the automobile and the airplane that ended an era of passenger rail service. His work also

Overview

O. Winston Link photographed the Norfolk and Western, the last major steam railroad in the United States, when it was converting its operations from steam to diesel in the 1950s. Link’s N&W project captured the industry at a moment of transition, before the triumph of the automobile and the airplane that ended an era of passenger rail service. His work also revealed a small-town way of life that was about to experience seismic shifts and, in many cases, vanish completely. Including a collection of more than 180 of Link’s most famous works and rare images that have never before been published, O. Winston Link: Life Along the Line offers a moving account of the people and communities surrounding the last steam railroad.

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Meet the Author

O. Winston Link (1914–2001) photographed the Norfolk and Western from 1955 to 1960. His brilliant black-and-white prints established him as an important American photographer, and many of his images have become modern classics. Tony Reevy, administrator at the UNC Institute for the Environment and advisory editor of Railroad History, is an author who has published two books and more than 100 poems and articles. He lives in Durham, North Carolina.